Housekeeping Notes

These are real housekeeping notes. That is, notes about stuff around my house. First topic: LED light bulbs.

I’ve purchased several LED floods that are can-mounted in my ceiling. They’re great. The quality of the light is good; they turn on instantly; they don’t flicker; and they use hardly any electricity. There’s only one problem: they seem to last less than a year. The LEDs themselves last for decades, of course, but the circuitry that drives the bulb doesn’t. As near as I can tell, there’s eventually enough heat buildup in the can to burn out the chip that controls the whole thing, and when the chip burns out, no more bulb.

I’m just guessing here, but this has now happened three times out of five bulbs I’ve purchased, and in all three cases the case of the bulb was hot to the touch when I unscrewed it from the base. So here’s my question: Does anyone know for sure what’s going on here? Is my guess that a chip is burning out probably correct? Am I just buying cheap bulbs? Can anyone recommend a can-mounted flood that’s reliable and will actually last for the 25 years that manufacturers so cheerfully promise?

Second: a cell phone update. In last weekend’s thread, the Google Nexus 5 got a lot of love, but so did the Motorola Moto X. I had actually made up my mind on the Nexus 5, but the T-Mobile store only sold it in a 16GB version, so I decided to go home and buy one online. But then I started dithering because of all the nice things people had said about the Moto X. Eventually, after far more dithering than makes sense for someone who doesn’t use a cell phone much, I decided the slightly smaller Moto X was the better choice. So: thanks, folks! I don’t think this would have come across my radar otherwise.